This city is out of this world!

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This city is out of this world!

Today was a very interesting day. Otherwise I guess I wouldn't have written.
As you probably noticed - I haven't written you a lot lately.
The reason is that my view description do not reflex my best writing. I get bored when I have to describe something and writing about sex and intimate experiences won't be fair towards people who shared time of their lives to become a part of mine and maybe even changed me a little bit, so I'm left with nothing but philosophy here, which is not why you bought the ticket, or had me buying the ticket, to be percise.

So, yeah, I went to Chung lai and another nice town in Sichuan, went to all the public parks that Chengdu has to offer, Wenshu Temple, Aidao nunnery and had a nice milk tea in the Loft greatest hostel in the world with the best Cafe in its lobby, and then I went to Beijing, went to the summer palace (amazing! especially the marbel boat. I loved that one for some reason), the Lost City (nice, but I was expecting more) and climbed the Great Wall of China (That was an amazing and exhausting experience and now I can really call myself a man, as my old flend Mao said). But nothing really sharp to write about that. If I had something to tell someone - I did it via e-mail.

But today was a very enriching day with a lot of food for thought as we say in the holly land, and its last part was... Well, the Hebrew word will be Hazui, which means hillusinated, or however that's written. So I had to share it with you.

As a Jew I had to go to this place I found out about in Lonely Planet - Ohel Moshe - formerly a sinagogue and today The Jewish Community Centre Museum. That was the religious and caltural centre of the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai.

Actually, as I have learned, while the democratic pretty souls (European and American countries, of course) refused to give Jewish refugees a shelter from the Nazis in the dark 1930's, Shanghai opened its wide arms and heart(s) toward them. The Chinese consuls in Austria and Germany in 1939-1940 actually issued "Life Saving Visas" to the Jewish people over there, and actually, there were already Jews from Ashkenaz and Sefarad here in Shanghai that immigrated to here in the 19th century.

So, many Middle-European Jews (and also Polish) moved their families, belongings and even their yeshiva to China. They published Newspapers, magazines and books in German and Yiddish, had their community centers, schools, yeshiva and even a hospital which treated them. There was a refugee centre, actually, but many Jews had houses in Chinese alleys and had nice Chinese neighbours that invited them over to celebrate Chinese New Year and to play with them.

However, then the Japanese decided they should take over, force all the Jews into a very certain restricted area (which is known as the ghetto, so I had my own mini-Poland trip today) and if my brothers wanted to leave the ghetto for some stupid reason like, let's say, their work was outside (!) - a very cocky Japanese person called Ghoya was the authority for that (self-refered as The King Of The Jews, as the Museum's wall stated. How ironic that some people were crossed for something like that without even saying that themselves) and had to issue them a working pass or something of the sort. As you already realized, the man was very cocky, like, he slapped their faces and asked them how dare they ask for a pass.

I guess that's one of the reasons why some of the Jews that chose to stay in China went to the war against the Japanese invaders and some even died while doing that. However, during the Japanese occupation, the Germans offered them a nice solution to that Jewish hazard. We all know that nice solution. You guessed right - The only solution for the Jewish problem can be the final solution. However, most of the Jewish people in Shanghai actually survived and most of them left after the war, but others stayed and still live here today with their families. Actually, when I think of that - I wouldn't go back to f**king Europe after the Nazi experience, so if I was neither a Zionist nor a green card owner, I'd stay here. China and especially Shanghai's not all that bad...

By the way, There was a plan of the Chinese government to give a part of Yunnan province to the central European Jews for resettlement, but it didn't come out for some reasons that are unknown to me. I photoed the document and when I upload the photos it will appear here. However, anybody who's been to Yunnan can tell you that it's not all bad. It's one of the beautiful peaces of Earth i've ever visited, actually.

Let's just say that if USA or UN ever decides to attack Iran - this is where we should resettle until Zion is ready for us again. Nice landscape, nice views out of the window, nice neighbours (not a word of English, of course, but I know cities like this in Israel) and some great, great Noodle soup, Barbeque and Dumplings. The best in China, actually, with all do respect even to Sichuan, which is very good with the hot pots, noodle soup should be left out to Yunnan, since they're making the best one over there in the South. In other words - It would be a nice place to rest from our cousins, if we ever have to leave them for a while.

If going back to Shanghai for a sec, it's not all that bad. No, actually, Shanghai can eat New York. This city's exciting, colorful, big and powerful, abut also has the ancient pretty neighbourhoods and the classic sights lays in harmony beside the modern aesthetic one. This city is what Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City would like to be but they're not. It's the most commercialized place I've ever been to but it's pretty. It has its own culture and therefore its own Time Out and it can only be compared to New York with its structure, pace and adrenalin levels. It's so the opposite of almost everything else in my journey.

Unfortunately, the park area between the river and the Bund (historical buildings by the river) is being constructed, so I didn't get to see it properly (the huge old beautiful building by the river with the park. F**k, there's a fence), but the architecture is pretty enough by itself.

However, as I was gonna end my day, having a nice dinner on Nanjing road (this city's out of this world and this street is out of the Universe) and looking for a public urinary, just before having to decide if I'm going back to the hostel or banging my head against the Vodka, I passed near the Grand Theatre, which is actually a grand cinema. A man handed me a ticket and marked me to come in, talking to me in Chinese. I inqired about what's that about and another man standing right next to him said "Money - (and marked with his hand the Chinese jesture for 'no') Bu qui ('no')." So, I told myself "Why not? what's wrong about a free movie?"

Well, this movie had subtitles, but in Chinese, other than its name which was translated to my adopting language (dear English), but it was an entertaining movie, one that if you follow well you can get without all that understanding the spoken words thing, so I actually enjoyed. I even laughed. The cinema was huge. Actually, watching a movie here, as I found out yesterday, asking about the new movie Confucious costs 120 Yuan, so I found the "for free" thing not a very bad deal, even though it costed me a taxi later (the metro closes around 22:30), and the taxis here are almost Israeli price, that is, a lot.

However, that's not the end of it. When the movie ended I saw many people didn't get up off their chairs and the ones who did went mostly to the stage area, where the curtains were shut and two technicians hung a huge poster of the movie on a... (fuck! I'm supposed to know that word. Tzug in Hebrew) that was brought down to them. Many people had their cameras and phones and they took photos of that poster. I figured out that getting out of the cinema would probably be the wrong thing to do right now, so I just stayed to see what happens and got my camera ready as well.

Well, a nice hostess got up on the stage and spoke Chinese for 20 seconds, and then welcomed all the stars from the movie to the stage. I took a lot of photos of the actors receiving flowers from three ladies that seemed like cinema-workers, talking, answering questions coming from the excited audience and singing Happy Birthday to one of them, which today's her birthday. Since tonight was the premiere and basically this movie was made in Shanghai (I recognized a lot of the settings), it may not be out of the ordinary, but given that I was there by chance and had no idea about all that - it was very exciting for me, even though I did not know any of the actors from before today and they only spoke Chinese, a language in which I can understand very few words, most of those have to do with food.

This city, if I haven't said so yet, is out of this world!

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Comments

[Ima-ish]

לא ידעתי
ממש מעניין. לא ידעתי את כל הדברים האלה על סין והיהודים בתקופת מלחמת העולם השניה. כיף לשמוע שהעיר ממש מלהיבה וסיפור הקןלנוע הסיני- חוייה אוף איזו אינליגנטית את, לספר עלכל אלה באנגלית, ועוד כזאת אמאיש..

[nogagiss]

I forgot how I re-enter to edit this page, so I'll just add that by "peaces of the world" I meant pieces of the world, of course, and that when I wrote Yunnan has nice views and nice landscape - that was an understatement, of course. Ima-Ish, thanks! =)